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Monday, October 7, 2013

Sleep…are we getting any yet?

You're yawning, J? Well then let's get some sleep...tonight.

It’s no wonder that sleep deprivation can be used as a form
of torture.This was by far the
hardest part of parenting multiples for me (and probably would have been even
if I’d had a singleton).I
remember mentally crying out to God for mercy!I was depressed and unable to think clearly. When your babies may need to eat every
2.5 to 3 hours, you’re trying to nurse, bottle-feed, burp and change the
babies, pump, and clean it all up, and you’re really only getting an hour of
uninterrupted sleep between each feeding, then it seems as though it will never
pass.And when more than 5 months
had gone by and I told good friends that I still had to go in and check on the
boys FIFTEEN times in a night, the looks on their faces was all I needed to
know something was wrong! I was desperate for help and advice when it came to
getting our sons to sleep through the night.

Might I add that if you live in an apartment like we did,
and you’re paranoid your crying baby/babies will wake the neighbors, stop worrying!People will understand that babies cry
and life goes on.It won’t kill
either your baby or your neighbors to have a few minutes of crying going on.This paranoia probably fed a lot of the
habits we formed as a family early on that ended up making us all more, rather
than less, sleep-deprived.

I read 3 different books on baby sleep, and pulled bits and
pieces from each book to cobble together my own approach to sleep
training.Below are the key points
of each that were most helpful to me.(Please note, I only listed the positive points from each book, not the
points I disagreed with.If you
read the books you’d have to make those conclusions yourself.)It’s just what happened to work for our
family. Use your own judgment and don’t feel like you and your babies need to
fit into the mold of any one book’s claims and promises.But I have a lot of friends who have recently
had, or are about to have, babies soon, so I thought maybe I’d put it all
together and it might be helpful to someone!

“The Baby Sleep
Solution,” by Suzy Giordano

oFeed
your babies on a schedule, gradually emphasizing daytime
nursing/eating/bottles.They’ll be
hungrier if you stretch out the time between daytime feedings, eat more during
the day, and thus need to eat less at night (while also gradually increasing
time between nighttime feeds until they’re eliminated).

oKeep
things bright, active, and engaging during the day to help them differentiate
between night and day.(Get outside!Daily stroller walks, and even sitting outside on the patio
with the babies, helped keep me sane.Also we did a LOT of tummy time to tire them out.)

Hanging out on the patio!

oAlso
schedule daytime activities and napping.The more structured the day is, the more their bodies come to know when
to expect sleep and when to expect active periods.Try to put feeding after waking up, so children won’t
associate needing to eat to fall asleep.

oHave
an established bedtime routine that will cue your babies it’s time to sleep.(We loved and used the suggestions of having a favorite lullaby CD
and/or a crib soother that played music or ocean sounds at bedtime.)

Baths eventually became a favorite part of our bedtime routine.

“Solve Your
Child’s Sleep Problems,” by Richard Ferber

oTeach
your child to fall asleep under whatever conditions will be present if they
wake up in the middle of the night.If they can fall asleep at bedtime alone, in their crib, in the dark,
then if they wake in the night, they’re better equipped to self-soothe later.If, however, they need a pacifier, a
bottle, or you to fall asleep at bedtime, they will also need those things in
the middle of the night when they awaken.(Since ours did rely heavily on
pacifiers, I had to stop the horrible habit of stumbling into their room
several times a night to replace the pacifiers if they couldn’t find them.)

D and his beloved Wubbanub. In defense of the Wubbanub, they're great once your babies get older and can grasp the stuffed animal part during the night to more easily return the pacifier to their mouths.

oAs
they learn to fall asleep on their own, they will cry; go in and check on them
and comfort them every few minutes, gradually allowing more time to pass
between checks until they fall asleep.(We started with pausing when they
cried to see if they’d fall asleep on their own first.If they cried we let 5 (excruciating)
minutes go by before going in to comfort them.And then every 5 minutes until they fell asleep.The next night we would wait a couple
more minutes, and so on.I’d like
to clarify that, contrary to popular belief, this author DOES NOT support hours
and hours of crying with no parental comfort.)

“Healthy Sleep
Habits, Happy Child,” by Marc Weissbluth

oSometimes
an earlier bedtime, even 6 or 7 p.m., means more sleep than keeping your child
up too late in an attempt to tire them out.(Ours had been going
to bed at 8 for months.For some
reason when we shifted it to 7, they slept more soundly and longer.)

I was very strict with all our routines and such once we
finally decided to “sleep train” at 6 months.But we could have implemented some of the principles above
earlier than that, I imagine. Once
the boys were sleeping 12-hour nights, with two well-established naps totaling
around 3 hours of daytime sleep, then we could make exceptions for things like
travel, illness, etc., and the boys would more easily fall back into the
routine again afterwards.